


Any Day Of The Year

by Clea2011



Category: Primeval
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-09
Updated: 2012-10-09
Packaged: 2017-11-16 00:04:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/533263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clea2011/pseuds/Clea2011
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt thought birthdays were greatly over-rated.</p><p>Thanks to Annariel for the lovely cover art.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Any Day Of The Year

 

 

Birthdays.

Matt never quite understood what all the fuss was about. Back when he was growing up, a new birth wasn't much to celebrate. Born into a world like that, if you were lucky then you didn't make it through the first week. The blood and any noise accompanying the birth attracted the predators, and even deep underground there was still a risk because they'd find a way to get in if they realised. Then when the baby had arrived and started screaming its head off... no, it wasn't really a cause for celebration. The few women left were getting themselves sterilised, then as an extra safeguard men started doing the same. No chance for the race to do anything other than die out.

By the time Matt was an adult, there just weren't any babies and nobody was really interested in celebrating how many years they'd lived in that hellish world. He wasn't the youngest, or didn't think he was but there was no way of telling other than by appearance and everyone was so filthy that they could be any age. There were no seasons, just the bleak yellow sky. Nothing to measure the passage of time.

His father had no idea. When they'd forged their records, he'd just guessed. Eighteen was convenient, eighteen was an adult. Eighteen meant that he had the longest possible time active in the new world before he was deemed too old to work and left in a position where he couldn't influence what happened in the future. So, he was eighteen.

And now he was thirty-two. Or thereabouts. Maybe. They'd come through the anomaly on 27th August, so that was his birthday on all the records. It was always on top of most people's summer holidays, and often the bank holiday weekend as well, so it was easy to let it pass unnoticed.

He'd asked his father about it once, in the early days when he'd first worked with someone who thought the occasion of their birth was a great reason to go out with a huge crowd of friends and acquaintances and get totally plastered. Gideon had shrugged and told him it was a frivolous tradition in this time and that perhaps he could make use of it by going along and shadowing the young woman they'd been studying because who knew what she might say or do if he could get her drunk enough?

It didn't really answer his question, which was whether he should start celebrating his own fake birthday, so he asked it again. Gideon fixed him with that slightly disdainful, always disappointed look that he had when he looked at his son in those days, and informed him that such frivolities were not for him, and didn't he have better things to do with his time? Matt didn't ask again.

On 27th August the following year, Gideon gave him a pot plant because there could never be enough plants in the world, and at least that was something practical out of the useless frivolity. And then his attention immediately turned back to the mission. Every year after that, Matt found his plant collection increasing.

No, he'd never really understood what all the fuss was about.

In his adult life, Matt found himself moving around from place to place, following leads that never produced the results they were hoping for. It didn't leave a lot of time to make friends or to put down roots. Gideon told him that this really didn't matter. Friends got in the way. Friends were a nuisance when you were spying on someone else and trying to get information. How could you wander into a bar and pretend to be someone you weren't if one of your mates had wandered in there too and decided to come over and blow your cover? It happened once, twice, and then Gideon put his foot down. No more accepting of social invitations. Not unless it benefitted the mission.

So there had been no more friends, and nobody who really cared if it was Matt's birthday or not. Which was fine, because there was only a one in three hundred and sixty five chance that the 27th August really was his birthday anyway. And, actually, Matt found birthdays could be quite useful if you didn't really have one. For example, he could walk into a bar on any given day and settle down, waiting for his prey. When they came in, it was very easy to pretend to be the lonely Irishman, far from home, celebrating his birthday by himself in a city full of strangers. Their suspect would, often as not, settle down for a friendly drink and chat and things would progress from there. It depended on their sexuality and their nature as to just how things progressed, but the drink always helped loosen tongues and Matt had been taught to do whatever it took to get the information. And then he'd be gone, never the same bar twice.

That was the great thing about London. It was huge and anonymous and full of strangers.

It was different when he started at the ARC. For one thing, this time he knew he was working with the people that he needed to be with. Okay, so he wasn't quite sure which one was responsible for the disaster, or even if it was all of them, but he knew he was in the right place and had made the right contacts. And this time there was no running away from any acquaintances, no escaping from friendships. That was okay, he knew he could handle it. They weren't so very different to all the people he'd met over the years. And when the time came, if it came, he'd walk away. They meant nothing to him. None of them. He certainly wouldn't be celebrating fake birthdays with them.

Matt had never worked anywhere like the ARC before. There was quite a mixture of staff - science, security and administration. Some, like Jess and himself, were fairly new and still finding their way. Others like Becker, Lester, Lester's secretary who was always giving him suspicious looks and never handed any files over without interrogating him first as to just why he wanted them, that annoyingly cheerful bloke who worked on the security gate... they'd all been there for years and knew each other well. He couldn't see any particularly strong friendships, it was more a bond of circumstances. Whatever it was, they all stuck together and it took the newcomers a while to break through.

No, it took Matt a while to break through. Jess seemed to breeze her way into everyone's good books almost instantly with her cheery nature and ability to bring in biscuits, cupcakes or the like for everyone most Mondays. Within a week she was having lunch with Lorraine, and as soon as Abby and Connor returned she'd got them moved into her flat.

It was a pity, really, that he'd not recruited Jess to his cause. She'd have been far better at sitting in bars and chattering away to people than he ever had been.

It was Jess, of course, who resurrected the birthday thing. Apparently Lorraine had a copy of an old spreadsheet that one of the data officers in the old ARC had maintained religiously for several years. Nobody had ever managed to get more than a couple of days beyond their birthday without getting an email asking if they had a nice birthday and wondering just when the cakes were going to be brought in. The tradition hadn't been resurrected with the new ARC... at least not until Jess found it.

Lorraine was her first victim. The secretary rolled her eyes when she saw her desk decorated with balloons and a ‘Happy Birthday!’ banner but loved the bunch of flowers Jess had bought her and dutifully went out and got some cakes. A group of them even headed for the pub after work. Matt noticed that they all seemed to get on a little better together at work after that trip, and better still when the little group started to make it a regular thing.

That was just the first of many. Becker didn't look too happy when it was his turn, but then he never looked particularly happy so that might not have had anything to do with the ridiculously cheery and therefore totally inappropriate card that everyone had signed and left on his desk. It took Jess nearly two days to get cakes out of him, and even then they were probably the cheapest Lidl had to offer. He refused to join the pub gang, but Matt suspected that had more to do with the fact that he might be forced to put his hand in his pocket again than anything else.

Lester just sighed when he saw the balloons in his office, called Jess in, handed over some money and told her to go and do the necessary. Those, Matt recalled, had been pretty good cakes. And then Lester, to his surprise, had gone out after work and done the pub thing. Apparently the hostelry of choice did a fairly decent whisky. Also, Matt had by then started to notice that Lester did pretty much whatever Lorraine and Jess told him if they ganged up on him, which they'd started doing. They were turning into a formidable team.

It went on, all through the summer. Matt signed the cards when they landed on his desk, and helped himself to cakes when they appeared in the coffee room. It just didn't occur to him where it would inevitably lead.

He should probably have read some sort of warning into the fact that Becker snorted derisively at him when Matt walked past him on the morning of August 27th, heading for his office. Or that when he turned around the soldier had a big smirk on his face. But he'd already had Becker labelled as a bit of a weirdo with an unhealthy liking for guns who was unlikely to have the brainpower to mastermind the end of the world so really didn't matter in the great scheme of things. He'd probably Googled a particularly attractive shotgun that morning, Matt decided, and left him to it.

Matt quite liked his office. He could shut the door and go through whichever personnel files he wanted, without any fear of being disturbed. He could shut out the arguments and the banter, and the people walking past who were bored and just wanted to stop and chat for a few minutes. He liked the way it was full of his pot plants, and that if he asked then Jess would just order him another shelf for them without even questioning it. He particularly liked the way the office obviously annoyed Becker. Becker didn't have an office of his own unless you counted the armoury. Which nobody did.

The ‘Happy Birthday!’ banner (looking a little worse for wear now after several months use) was stuck across his door. And even then it didn't click, because he was so used to seeing it around and watching Jess stalk her latest victim, and anyway the fact that it was supposedly his birthday didn't even cross his mind.

When he opened the door, though, there could be no further doubt. There were balloons. Lots of them. In fact, there were rather more than usual, and they were very brightly coloured, and they were all over the place. Rather a lot of them were fixed up quite high, where Jess (and unfortunately Matt as well) couldn't possibly have reached so she must have had help. Presumably from a tall person with a step-ladder who would think this was funny.

If there was anything in the world more pointless than a balloon, Matt had yet to find it. Still, they were easy enough to get rid of. Unbending a paper clip, he used the end to burst the nearest few.

"What are you doing?"

Jess, of course. He wondered how she managed to move so quietly in those shoes.

"Clearing my desk?" he offered hopefully.

"Have you brought in cakes?"

"Uh... no. I'm not really one for cakes."

She raised an eyebrow. "Strange. You've eaten everyone else's." God, did she keep track of everything? "Seconds, sometimes." Apparently so. Perhaps she was an agent from the future as well. He'd have to go through her file again. "The decor stays up until the cakes appear. It's the rule."

The rule? He frowned. They actually had rules now? He'd wondered how they'd worn Becker down. Now he knew. And there was that grumpy man in Accounts, who'd had a birthday for about a week, now that he thought about it. "I'll get some at lunchtime."

"Lovely! Though they're great to have mid-morning..."

That was probably going to go into the rulebook as well. "I'll go in a minute."

"Perfect! There, that wasn't so hard!"

"Can I take the crap down now?"

"End of the day. So, did you get some nice presents?"

Presents. Yes, that was what they gave out at these things. "Yeah. Um... my dad usually gives me a plant."

That wasn't the right thing to say, he could see it in her face. Her eyes flickered around at the numerous pot plants covering almost every inch of space in his office. She tried to hide it, but he noticed. Matt was normally very good at noticing things. It was just the birthday thing that he'd missed. Totally.

"A plant? That's quite... Oh, I suppose because you collect them... it's an expensive rare one?" She sounded hopeful, and anyway it was a way out.

"Yeah. Rare. Birthday treat."

"And you brought that one in yesterday!" Before he could stop her, Jess had already picked up the yucca plant Gideon had handed him the day before. He was supposed to test the soil and find out why it was dying but he hadn't had a chance yet. Jess frowned. "Well that's not rare. My mother has one. Seriously, that's all you got?"

"We don't do birthdays." Damn, where had that come from? They really should have recruited her, she asked far too many questions, and was far too observant. "He's ill. He's in a home."

Jess's face fell. Yes, she really was very, very good at the whole sympathy thing. He could've done with the lessons years ago when his father was getting angry with him for not demonstrating enough emotion when he was trying to con people into revealing things. That was the only good thing about Gideon being ill - he couldn't shout and rant at Matt like he used to.

"Oh. That's awful. And he's your only family. Oh."

He thought there was a chance she was actually going to cry. For a moment he was horrified. Then he realised something: "How do you know that?"

"Oh, I read everyone's file, I know everything. I have to, next of kin and things like that. In case there's an accident, or I send someone into an area where they might be distracted by concerns about family."

That was a good excuse. He suspected that it was just because she was a bit nosey though. And it was probably to help fill in the birthday spreadsheet as well. He'd really have to keep an eye on Jess, and possibly review his own file as well, just in case she found something.

"I'll get those cakes then."

She beamed at him and trotted happily out of his office. He regretted it a few minutes later when he walked past Becker's station and heard the soldier say: "Pathetic. I held out for two days."

"Yeah, and it was a waste of time, wasn't it? You need to start recognising when you're beaten."

That would've annoyed Becker, and made Matt feel slightly better about having to fork out nearly a tenner at the nearest branch of Greggs. When he got back he noticed there was a card on his desk as well. It had a picture of a leprechaun on it, and a joke he didn't completely understand, (which was probably for the best given that he was supposed to be their boss) and everyone had signed it.

Later, he found himself bullied into going to the pub after work. Buying a round didn't really bother him, he and his father had long since found ways to get all the money they could possibly need by gambling - which wasn't really gambling when you'd already researched the result via old computer records. But other people's attitudes amused him, particularly the number of occasions Becker needed to visit the loo - just as it was time for someone to buy a round. And it was funny watching Connor get absolutely plastered on just a couple of drinks. Another time, and he might have used it to his advantage. Connor was, after all, very high on his list of likely candidates for the destroyer of the world. But for once he left it, not without storing the information away for future reference, and let himself be drawn into their jokes and stories and just for a short time he let himself feel as if he were part of something.

Gideon would have been livid if he'd known.

Later still when he finally got home, more intoxicated than he ever normally let himself get, he pulled out the card from where he'd rolled it up in his jacket pocket. Something else fell out with it, a small box wrapped in shiny blue paper with a slightly squashed bow and a little card.

"Everyone should have a present on their birthday," it read. "Happy Birthday from all of us!"

It was another leprechaun, this one a small statuette clutching a pint of Guinness. It was tiny, cheap, ugly and totally pointless. And it gave him a strangely warm feeling, thinking of them bothering to get it for him, even if the effort was minimal.

He put it on one of the many empty shelves in his flat, straightened out the card and then put that up beside it. Then he sat there, looking at it and trying to work out why he liked the little model. It was crass and tasteless. It was also the only birthday present he'd ever had in his entire life, on that or any other of his 365 possible birthdays. But it couldn't be anything to do with that, because he didn't do birthdays, and didn't care about the people he worked with. They weren't his friends or anything.

Still, it was going to sit up on that shelf, looking totally out of place in his soulless empty flat, for as long as he lived there.

***


End file.
